Fred Wilson

Fred Wilson has no desire to make things with his hands. He gets everything that satisfies his soul and by that he brings objects together that are in the world and manipulates them by working with different arrangements and the way that he presents them. Fred's exhibitions are contexts for the display of the artifacts where they are found in a museum collection along with wall labels, sound, light and pairing objects together. I have found that his installations lead the viewers to recognize the changes in the context and creates a meaning.  He maintains the subject view of the museum environment with all the work that he presents.

Mining the Museum  - This piece highlights the history of slavery in America. He created the mixed media parts, focusing on Africans, issues and representations of black and white. With that he included a suite of black glass sculptures, a black and white tiled room with wall graffiti that was the text of African-American slave narratives. This installation is very popular and an influential installation. Fred takes social justice and uses that has his subject for this piece.

Beauty & Memory -  In this installation Fred thinks of beauty as ultimate visual experience. He shows that he is interested in the beauty in that it can hide a meaning, the visual experience can sometimes be so overwhelming that you sometimes allow yourself not to think about the meaning of beauty. He says that beauty and ugliness are not necessarily separate, but we as people tend to separate them. The memory part he says about this installation is to look at it this way, he likes to think that objects have memories or no as much as they are imbued with memory. So, the way that i see that is if you go to a place that is really familiar to you is in a totally different context - you then realize how much you have imbued from an "object" or "place." The more you know the more you are able to understand about something, and the more you know the more you have to work with.

Atlas - This shows his take on the greek god atlas -  but inside of holding up the plant, with his version god holds up the classical books that define the worlds greatest art even though sometimes people tend to ignore almost everything outside of Europe and America.

Dark Dawn -  This is an example of Fred work using a series of large black droplets that trickle down the wall into a "pool" of black glass. When i look at this i wondering if the droplets are tears or rain, or maybe he wants you to think that they are all liquids.


Conclusion -  I love how Fred's work forces the viewer(me) to question his work, the shape, historical truth, the artist value and the language of display but also what kinda of biases do our cultures express. When looking at his different works i start to ask questions about my own thoughts and really have to work because he is not telling me everything. I like that just by having the experience by looking at his art without knows that not many artist created it -  but just one artist.